CNBC goes 'big box' with Costco document...

CNBC goes 'big box' with Costco document...

Photo Courtesy CNBC

COSTCO CEO Craig Jelinek being interviewed by CNBC's Carl Quintanilla for CNBC’s ‘The Costco Craze’ documentary

SO WHAT drives an otherwise sane, normal family shopper to plunge into a giant concrete warehouse and emerge an hour later with 83 rolls of paper towels, two 50-pound sacks of flour, five giant thuja trees, a package of 160 A A batteries and a 25-gallon drum of peanut butter?

CNBCs Carl Quintanilla does a nice job of breaking down that answer in The Costco Craze, a documentary on exactly how no-frills shopping for larger-than-life household products has become an $ 88 billion business.

And thats just for Costco. That doesnt include Sams Club and other contenders. But Costco has risen above the others, Quintanilla suggests, the way Kleenex rose above other facial tissues and Coke rose above other colas.

Costco may not have become the common generic term for warehouse shopping yet, but this report suggests it's on its way and why. The documentary takes a generally admiring tone, suggesting Costco does more good things than troubling things.

Quintanilla does raise the issue of whether the dominance of size at Costco contributes to our contemporary problem of excess.

Does buying animal crackers in beach ball-sized containers make us eat more animal crackers? D oes buying ravioli in banquet-size portions encourage us to supersize our own portions?

Quintanilla doesnt answer those questions. He does address them, just as he conducts a potentially eyebrow-raising interview with a Costco wine buyer.

She talks about how she started at Costco buying childrens toys and graduated to wine. She has no particular expertise, she says, but thats okay, because she doesnt see wine as different from any other product. You figure out what people want and you stock it.

At the end of the day, its just a beverage, she says.

Some wine fans may disagree. But in the larger picture, Costco is thinking way ahead of its customers on several key shopping psychology fronts.

The fact it has no directory forces buyers to walk all around the store and be tempted by everything.

It deliberately stocks 75 triggers staples like food and drugstore products and 25 treasures, unexpected things ripe for impulse buying.

Where some supermarkets might have 100,000 items, Costco has about 4,000. This might seem counterintuitive, but in fact it does the thing most consumers secretly want: It makes choices for them. You dont have to study a dozen bottles of ketchup. There is one bottle, albeit a large bottle. You either buy it or you dont.

Costco also has little treasures you can count on, like a $ 1.50 hot dog. So at the end of the day, does Costco save you a lot of money? Maybe, maybe not, depending on what you buy. But you walk out of that cavernous warehouse feeling like you got real stuff, not cheap stuff. You just got a lot of it.

And thats what we like here in America. A lot. Of anything.